When I am king, we will have a mathematical curve that defines the tax rate for all incomes. This curve will be smooth, continuous and progressive** so that the higher your income is, the higher your tax rate is, up to a designated limit, and there it will be truncated for the richest tax payers. (A flat tax for the super rich.) One such curve is given by the equation: Tax Rate% = log(Income/a, b), in Excel math, where "a" is the zero crossing constant and "b" is the base of the log. Constant "a" and log base "b" were adjusted to make the curve fit the 2010 single tax rate schedule. (a = 2 when income is in k$, and b = 1.202) You can see this curve by downloading an up-to-date Excel work sheet (click on: Tax Rate Curve) or by looking below at outdated photos of the Excel page. The fit is not exact but close enough. (Further refinement is possible.) Notice that the curve for the 2010 Singles Income Tax Schedule flattens out to a rate of 35% starting at incomes over ~2M$/yr. Well what do you know, the rich guys already have a flat tax rate!!!

**A single flat tax rate for everyone is absurd! It would be too high for the poor and too low for the rich. Poor people are poor! They don't have much money. They need help. If the flat tax rate were low enough for the poor to afford it, then there would not be enough tax money to run the country. And if it were high enough to run the country, say 35% ??, then poor people could not afford it, the middle class would be stressed, and only the rich people could afford it, while the super rich wold be laughing all the way to the bank.A progressive tax rate is the only fair way to tax a financially stratified society.Its the Christian way. Rich people helping poor people. Are there no more Christians in the Republican party? A single flat tax rate,which Increases the taxes of the destitute and decreases the taxes of the super rich,isincredibly stupid.It is taking from the poor and giving to the rich!!!A tax credit for creating jobs I can agree with, but a flat tax rate for everyone is just plain dumb.OK, look at it this way - We should have a flat tax rate for the super rich, and a flat tax rate for the destitute, and for everyone in between - some kind of a tax rate curve.As a matter of fact, thats exactly what I propose. Read on.(Or 5 flat tax rates for the destitute, the poor, the middle class, the rich, and the super rich. Or 10 flat taxrates... etc, etc.)Also, think of the looming problems with Social Security, Medicare and the deficit that are awaiting solutions...Rich people can afford to help. With wealth comes responsibility. Or so it should be.Furthermore, consider this fact - In 2008, only 1% of the taxpayers earned more than 380 k$. However, this 1% group contributed 38% of all income taxes collected!!! (See http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html.) What this means is that the average person in this 1% group earns one hell of a lot of money. They are super rich. Therefore, if this 1% group were taxed at a higher rate, it would significantly increase the amount of income tax money collected. And super rich people can easily afford it.

Figures A1, A2, and A3 are on the top row; figures B1, B2, and B3 are on the next row, etc. The first column(A1 to D1) contains blue data points derived from the 2010 Single Taxpayer tax schedule. Column 2, graphs (A2 to D2), show a red curve that is a plot of a formula (TaxRate% = log(Income$/a, b) that was adjusted to "fit" the curve of the Tax Rate Schedule. The red Formula curve is superimposed over the blue Tax Schedule curve for purposes of comparison. Notice the ugly bumps in the blue curve and the nice smooth progression of the red curve. Next, the third column (A3 to D3) of red graphs shows the proposed tax rate curve. The column 3 graph horizontal axis use E notation; 1E+06 is read as one times ten raised to the power of plus six, which is 1M$. The Excel spreadsheet has updated graphs and other good stuff. To download it, click on: Tax Rate Curve.

Now notice the proposed new tax rate law, the curve shown in the right hand column of red graphs. This curve is the same as the one fitted to the 2010 tax rate schedule except that: a) it extends to 0% tax rate at an income of 2k$ (2,000$), b) it has a 0% tax rate for incomes between 0 and 2,000$ (a flat tax rate for the really poor)**, c) it has no 35% tax rate limit, but instead, d) it continues to rise smoothly to a very-rich-guy flat tax rate of 50%, for incomes over ~40M$/yr. (Only 1% earn more than 380k$/yr, but many of these people earn much, much more, like entertainment celebrities, top pro ball players, top level executives, some merchant bankers, some investment brokers, and some politicians.) The upper limit of 94% of yore was too much and the present 35% limit is too little. 50% (a historically prominent number - see sheet #4 of the "Tax Rate Curve" spreadsheet) is more reasonable. (Some experts say that an upper limit of about 70% would maximize tax revenue.) See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve for afurther discussion. Its a little confusing but it will broaden your perspective.

** Maybe people who do not pay any income tax should not have the right to vote?

This new curve is more fair than the old tax rate schedule for the following reasons:

It is progressive over a longer range than is the tax rate schedule.

At the lower end, the schedule taxes poor people a flat 10% on incomes from 0 to 8,375$. To beprogressive, it should start at 0% and work up to 10%. The proposed curve charges very poor people 0% tax on incomes from 0 to 2,0000$ and then it progressively increases to 10% at an income of 11,920$ (11.920k$). (The poverty level is about 12,000$.) This is more fair.

At the high end, as mentioned before, the schedule charges a flat 35% for incomes of about 2M$ and above, whereas the new curve allows the tax rate to continue to rise smoothly, until it reaches 50% forincomes of about 20M$ and above. This is more fair.

The schedule results in bumps and pockets (explained latter) on a graph of the true** tax rate vs. income, that result in inequities (see figure A1). The Kluznickian tax rate curve has no such inequities. It is continuous,smooth, and progressive.It corrects a seemingly errant data point of the schedule - The true tax rate for the high end of the 2nd bracket, for an income of 34,000$, should be 15.4%, not the 13.8% that results from the tax rate schedule. This is more fair.

** True tax rate is defined by the formula TTR% = (Tax$ / Income$) X 100. This differs from the Incremental (or marginal) tax rate for a bracket, which is defined by the formula

ITR% = {[Tax$(Hi) - Tax$(Lo)] / [Income$(Hi) - Income$(Lo)]} X 100

where Hi and Lo refer to the ends of the tax bracket.The percentage numbers given in the tax rate schedule are incremental tax rate numbers. All of the graphs above are of true tax rates.

As to the bumps of the tax rate schedule curve, they are a property of the formulation of the schedule. Each bracket has a starting tax amount and then on top of that there is added a percentage of the income in excess of the starting income of that bracket. This formulation causes the true tax rate to progress asymptotically to the incremental tax rate number. When the amount of the income gets to be much larger than the starting income in the bracket, then the starting income becomes insignificant and after that all income is taxed at a seemingly flat rate equal to the incremental tax rate. In other words, the tax rate schedule does not result in a smooth, continually progressing true tax rate. That is not fair.

Most people could handle the logarithmic equation, (everyone who has Excel or maybe Turbo Tax software, or who uses a Tax Accountant), but for some people it would be a problem. But for those, the IRS could set up a phone number and a URL where people could go to input a taxable income number and get back the amount of tax due. Or we could go back to a tax rate schedule, if we were willing to compromise accuracy (fairness), only this time we could minimize inaccuracy by making the brackets smaller, especially at the lower end of the curve. Also, the tax for theends of each bracket would be computed from the Kluznickian curve, and the incremental tax rate would be computed as the slope of a straight line between bracket end points. The new and improved tax rate schedule, based on the proposed curve, would be as follows:

Alternative Income Tax Rate Schedulefor a Single Taxpayer

The income tax upper limit should not be reduced until after the national debt is reduced to the pre-Reagan days - about 2,000,000 M$ (2 trillion $) in 2010 dollars. (See The National Debt on work sheet #5 of the "Tax Rate Curve" spread sheet.)

B. Capital Gains Tax -

The present flat rate of 15% is ridiculously low for the super rich !!!

"The top 0.1% -- about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million -- are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400." And these guys are paying 15% on their main source of income!!! Absurd! Obnoxious! (See http://news.yahoo.com/top-0-1-nation-earn-half-capital-gains-172647859.html)

The capital gains flat tax is in need of change for all of the same reasons given above for flat taxes, and I propose the same solution. The capital gains tax rate should be a function of a persons adjusted gross capital gains. This function should be smooth, progressive, and flatten out at an upper limit. It should be logarithmic, like the one used for Income Taxes, but with a different upper limit, say 35% starting at an Adjusted Gross Capital Gains of 20M$. Why 35% and 20M$? Because 35% for everyone is what we had in 1978, and 35% at 20M$ feels right for now. Well, maybe 20M$ should be 2M$ ?? I leave it to the political economists to arrive at the "right" numbers.

To see the graphs of the proposed curve, go to sheet #7 of the Excel spreadsheet "Tax Rate Curve". The equation is: Tax Rate (%) = log(CapitalGains/2, 1.301) in Excel math, for capital gains in k$, as above.

The capital gains tax upper limit should not be reduced until after the national debt is reduced to the pre-Reagan days, about 2,000,000 M$ in 2010 dollars. (See The National Debt on work sheet #5 of the "Tax Rate Curve" spread sheet.)

C. Payroll Tax -

What are payroll taxes? They are FICA, FUTA and SUTA. FICA is Social Security (SS) and Medicare. FUTA and SUTA are Federal and State Unemployment Taxes. As of 2007 the tax is:

SS - 6.2% is withheld from an employee's pay, plus a matching amount is paid by the employer, for salaries up to 97,500$. Once that amount has been earned, neither the employee nor the employer owes any more SS tax for the remainder of the year.

Medicare - 1.45% is withheld from an employee's pay, plus a matching amount is paid by the employer. There is no wage base for the Medicare portion of the FICA tax. Both the employer and the employee continue to pay Medicare tax, no matter how much is earned.

FUTA - The employer must pay a FUTA tax of 6.2 %, but he can take a credit of up to 5.4% for SUTA taxes that are paid. If the employer is eligible for the maximum credit, the FUTA rate will be 0.8%. The wage base for FUTA is 7,000$. The employer will stop paying FUTA for each employee once their wages exceed 7,000$ for the year.

SUTA - Generally, the SUTA tax rate is based on the amount of unemployment claims that are filed by employees that have been terminated. When a business is new, the SUTA tax rate starts at the maximum but then declines if a history of few claims is established.

97,500$ ??? What a crock. Why in the world does the 6.2% SS tax stop at 97,500$ ??? What, the rich guys are needy, and deserve a tax break??? Rich guy favoritism!!! What a crock!!! Not only would I remove the income limit, but I would also make the tax progressive, with a tax limit of 10% starting at 2M$. Its the only fair way...

Should we force business to pay for welfare (SS co pay, Medicare co pay, FUTA, and SUTA)? I think not. It raises the cost of their products, makes them less competitive with their foreign competition, increases the foreign deficit, decreases GDP, decreases the number of jobs available, ... The government should shift corporate welfare taxes to other sources - income tax, sales tax, product tax, property tax, excise tax, estate tax, sin taxes, ... ???

To be continued... (maybe.)

D. Estate Taxes - TBD (maybe.)

E. Loopholes -Many people think that shady tax credits and other tax loopholes are the biggest tax problems we have. But they are beyond the scope of my knowledge.

F. Balanced Budget Law -Sounds good to me. Why didn't Reagan or Bush 1 or Bush 2 think of this??? (See the National Debt on work sheet #5 of the "Tax Rate Curve" spread sheet. The Republican spending is shocking.)

So remember to vote for me. (You wont have to call me "Your Royal Highness", Sire will suffice. Or just Nick.)

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ps #1

If I were king, I would also:

Put the nation on the metric system !!!

Disallow businesses and unions from making political contributions !!!

Restore banking and market regulations.

Bust up the biggest banks. (And throw half of their executives into jail?)

Reduce the salary, perks, and bennies of the Executive and Legislative branches; and the pensions of past, present and future members. (You have to start reform at the top.)

The Judiciary too?

The same for all civil servants.

Eliminate estimated taxes for individuals, except for rich people.

Pay out Social Security to an individual based on the amount of money payed in by that individual.

Make a law requiring all presidential candidates to prove they have a 3 digit IQ. (130 minimum?)

Amend the constitution to explicitly separate the church and the state.

And disallow religion and clergy from politics and government.

Ban religion from public schools - no biblical creation myth, no “Intelligent Designer” myth, no school prayers. (Religion should be taught to you in the church of your choice, not your political party or public school.)

Get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. But increase pressure on Iran and Korea.

Eliminate Affirmative Action (it is racial discrimination).

Ban abortion issues from the legislature and the ballot. (Men should not have the right to vote on it.)

Ban new Muslim church construction until they revise the Koran to outlaw all violence and endorse all UN human rights.

Outlaw the practice of Sharia in the US, as it includes draconian corporal punishment, and bias against women. Besides, all US citizens have the right to a US hearing by US law in a US court, and no church can usurp that right.

Outlaw all corporal punishment except for executions.

“Free” the Indians. Make them all US citizens. All the same rights and privileges; no more and no less.

Make English the only official language in the USA; required of all citizens.

Make all government documents English only. Including ballots and voter pamphlets.

Further restrict immigration.

Eliminate the tobacco subsidy!

Corn and cotton too.

All farm subsidies?

Tax kids rather than deduct them, each year. OK, one kid per family is free but each additional kid is taxed progressively higher, each year. (There are too many people in the world.)

Tax fat people for their overweight pounds. (Well, somebody has to do something.)

Increase taxation of the rich.

Have universal military training. 1 or 2 years. Before collage. Except the disabled and those who join the Peace Corps, or some such thing, for 4 or more years.

Keep the GI Bill, but for GI's only.

Put both Saturday and Sunday at the end of the week on our civil calendars, ie make Monday the first day of the week.

Make the Kluznickian Calendar the prime candidate for calendar reform.

Outlaw all pop-up ads and flashing ads on the Internet. (They drive me crazy; they make me mad.)

Disband the Republican party.

The Republicans are all screwed up. They are composed of several factions and each of those factions is all screwed up. I would disband them and tell them to start all over again. Get rid of the intransigent Tea Party lackeys to the super rich.Get rid of the Trickle Down and Flat Tax idiots. Get rid of the anti-science, religiously-insane Christian fundamentalists {with their: school prayers, biblical creation myth, intelligent designer, anti science (since science debunked the Bible)*, no big bang, no evolution, God created Eve from the rib bone of Adam, no stem cell research, no climate change problems, no family planing, no abortion, no right to die, no doctor assisted suicide,theocracy, ...}(aka the GOP God Squad.) The only thing worse than a Christian fundamentalist is a Muslim fundamentalist. Get religion and clergy out of politics and government!!! Maybe form 2 to 4 separate parties: one for the Christian fundamentalist crazies {No, no, no. Keep religion out of politics and government!!!}, one for the Trickle Down and Flat Tax idiots, one for the traditional uber right wing hardcore war mongers who pander to the military/industrial complex, and one for the sane and rational middle-of-the-road businessman Republicans.Some moderate and left leaning Republicans would be refreshing.

* Other Republicans are anti science because scientists say that a significant portion of global warming is man made, which is primarily caused by industry, and industry will have to spend big bucks to solve that problem, and industry would rather give Republican politicians big bucks to denigrate scientists, and politicians will do anything for money, so they denigrate science and scientists. Thats what Republicans do. People who do not believe in science or scientists are absolutely ridiculous!These same people, the fundamentalists, do believe in an undetectable god and other undetectable supernatural beings and places. They accept the supernatural that has no physical evidence, but reject science that has abundant physical evidence. Absolutely ridiculous.

40. And a few more things...

ps #2:

For those of you who appreciate my political economics acumen, I have included the following:

A Short History of US Political Economics

In the beginning, the Democrats took from the rich and gave to the poor. They expanded the government to include a large civil servant work force. And they wrote numerous rules and regulations to control business, and everyone else. And they expanded welfare to include just about everything and everyone, if they needed it or not. And when they ran out of money, they just increased taxes and printed more paper dollars. Their motto was - Spend, spend, spend, and then increase taxes and print more money. And labor unions (who bank the Democrats) can do no wrong. And businesses (who bank the Republicans) are the enemy (completely ignoring the fact that businesses create jobs for the unionists).

In the mean time, the Republicans ran around being the hard nosed businessmen. They strove to balance the budget, reduce government spending, reduce the size of government, reduce the deficit, … But they also tried to reduce the rules and regulations that limited business, and reduce the restrictions (like the environmental laws that protect people, animals, land, water, air) that cost business money. Their motto was - Reduce the size of government, reduce government spending, and reduce laws and regulations that restrict business or cost business money.

Then, when Trickle-Down Reagan became president, things changed. Now Republicans where the ones to increase government spending, for example for national defense contractors (their biggest clients), which ran up the national debt to unprecedented levels. "His" trickle-down economic theory (i.e. the Laffer theory and the Laffer curve, which are still unproven) was implemented by reducing the taxes of the rich, so that they had more money to invest, which would make them richer and happier and more willing to donate more money to support republican politicians, and maybe?, just maybe, create some more jobs for the working class. So, while spending was increased, the tax revenue was decreased, and the national debt shot up. Thanks a lot Trickle-Downers. And, many of those new jobs and a lot of the old jobs ended up going off-shore because -

Meanwhile the unions, the main clients of the Democrats, were busy doing their thing – increasing wages and decreasing productivity. This worked fine just after the WW2, since all of our European competition was bombed out, but after a while Europe rebuilt with modern equipment and cheaper labor. Also, the cheap-labor Far East emerged as big competitors to the US. Bye and bye, US business could no longer compete, so of course US business farmed out manufacturing and office jobs to cheaper labor markets overseas like India and China. Now the US working class has became the idle poor class. The poor are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer. Thanks a lot Democrat Unions and Trickle-Down Republicans. Idiots.

Republican deregulation did not help either. It ended up allowing banking and financial markets to screw investors while the rich bankers and investment brokers got richer. Banks gave out unsafe loans to unqualified home buyers (who later lost their jobs to cheaper off shore labor), at the urging of a couple of Bush presidents. The banks then got out from under these poisoned loans by bundling them into nondescript financial packages, derivatives, that somehow got good ratings from mentally defective rating companies, and selling them not only to the unsuspecting public but to the sophisticated big account executives as well. Well we all know how that worked out. So the Democratic Unions screwed us, the Republican Deregulaters screw us, the Republican Bankers screwed us, the Republican bond rating companies screwed us, and the Republican Trickle-Downers screwed us, and now we are all screwed up. And on top of that we now have Republican Tea Partyers, who are uncompromising Born Again Flat Tax Trickle-Downers, who refuse to let the political process function until they get their way. Screwed, screwed, screwed...

So vote for me, I can't do any worse than those bozos.

ps #3

Religious fundamentalists are screwing up the world - especially Moslem

fundamentalists, but Christian and Jewish fundamentalists too.

Muslim cleric rulers are screwing up Muslim countries.

Amend the US constitution to explicitly require separation of the church and the state,

and to ban all clergy from politics and government.

We need worldwide separation of the church and the state and a worldwide ban of all

How in the hell did Trump get elected? He is a wacko. Who voted for him? They tell me that it was the crazy portion of the Republican party plus the Democrat middle class union workers (MCUWs) who lost their jobs to cheaper overseas labor. Hmmm, I can see how this may be. But I also think that Trump may have been aided by Russian hackers.

What should we do about the unemployed MCUWs? What can we do to reduce the number of unemployed MCUWs?

Put them on long term welfare and pay them for not working? Taxes will go up.

Retrain them for higher skilled jobs? They must first be willing and able to do this. Taxes will go up.

Increase the taxes of the rich industrialists (the main benefactors of cheep off-shore labor) to pay for the above?

Bring back WPA projects?

Require all manufacturing and office work of American companies be done in America. The deficit will go up.

Quit free trade and go back to high tariffs, isolation and self sufficiency, if possible? Prices will go up.